From the President

Happy New Year and welcome to the first edition of Club Insight for 2018.

I trust you all survived the festive season and now your focus, and that of your team, is one looking towards the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.

As this edition lands on your desks, we will have just completed more work around the review of the current Clubs Queensland strategy to ensure we remain relevant to all community clubs across the State.

This process started back in July 2017 at the Right Direction Conference and has involved visits to both member and non-member clubs, as well as the facilitation of a Club’s Forum late last year to ensure feedback was obtained in relation to possible improvement as the industry’s peak body.

I thank all those who were involved in that process. We have listened to what was said, and draft recommendations were taken back to the Clubs Queensland Board and the Zone Representatives Strategic Planning Group in late January this year.
Given this, I’m looking forward to communicating the outcomes from that session and our efforts overall before the end of February. I have no doubt it will involve some change in our operations to ensure ongoing relevance and the optimisation of resources.

It is my pleasure to congratulate the Australian Labor Party (ALP) on the successful campaign which led them to victory at the recent Queensland State election. It is also pleasing that we now have a majority government in place, thus ensuring political stability when it comes to governing our great State.

Clubs Queensland looks forward to working closely with both the Government and Opposition to deliver positive outcomes for community clubs across Queensland, which in turn will also assist the communities these clubs service.

We have written to all elected Members of Parliament across the State congratulating and advising them of our intentions to meet with them in person at the earliest opportunity. The Honourable Yvette D’Ath MP, Attorney-General and Justice Minister and Leader of the House, is again responsible for the Liquor and Gaming portfolio in the re-elected government.

It is also my pleasure to acknowledge and thank all our valued sponsors, associates and suppliers for their support of Clubs Queensland throughout 2017, as well as their ongoing support in 2018.

In particular, I thank our major partner Keno for their ongoing and valued support. I also congratulate Keno’s parent company Tabcorp, on their multi-billion dollar merger with Tatts which has been over a year in the making. Now there is

some certainty on this front, I expect as an industry we will see renewed innovation around wagering, Keno, monitoring and more, which should assist with the retention and/or growth of on-premise patronage.

Finally, the 2018 Keno and Clubs Queensland Awards for Excellence event on Tuesday,
6 March is looming, as is the Australasian Hospitality and Gaming Expo on Wednesday, 7 and Thursday, 8 March. Both these events bring our industry together in Brisbane over a number of days and they are not to be missed. I look forward to seeing you there!

Warm regards,

Don Seccombe AMpresident

PS. Don’t forget to also join us at the Clubs Queensland Annual General Meeting – 3pm, Wednesday, 7 March 2018 within the AHG Expo Hall.